It’s December, which means it’s both basketball season and holiday shopping season. Whether you’re a player, a fan, a shopper or a pop-culture watcher, you’ve likely heard of the sneaker battles, where top companies like Nike, Adidas and Under Armour poach designers, adapt futuristic technologies, and wrangle over superstar athlete endorsements in an all-out effort to make the year’s ultimate basketball shoe. At Quid, we wondered: what’s really important to consumers when it comes to buying basketball shoes online? We used Quid software, which analyzes massive amounts of text, to compare two of the top-selling basketball shoes -- the Nike Overplay VIII and the Adidas Performance Men's Isolation 2. The analysis included more than 500 online customer reviews, showing not only what people say about the shoes they buy, but also how they feel about the entire buying experience. What follows is a summary of some of our findings. if you’d like to see the data in more depth.

In Quid, the top four clusters pertain to how the shoes feel (fit, comfort, lightweight and width). In other words, more than half  – around 57% – of reviews were about these topics. Using Quid’s cluster mapping, we can also see that comfort, lightweight and width are central to the conversation, meaning they’re the most prevalent topics discussed when buying shoes online. But in the network, "fit" clusters separately from the other attributes. Whether a shoe fits is important to online shoppers, since they haven’t had a chance to try on the shoes in a store. But it is an entirely separate issue from assessing a shoe’s quality and construction -- things like its weight, comfort, or width/narrowness. Similarly, price is a separate cluster, mainly because online shoppers discuss it separately from other issues like weight or comfort. While the majority of reviews were positive for both shoes, Adidas edged out Nike in terms of star ratings. For Adidas, 88% of reviews had either 4 or 5 stars.

Nike had a total of 74% in that category. In the network, we saw that Adidas compares more favorably to Nike in the broad areas of fit/comfort and quality, while Nike slightly edges out Adidas in regards to overall buying experience.nike free shoes tumblr The “fit” cluster is big driver for positive reviews, but issues with shoe width and narrowness prompted the most negative reviews -- indicating that shoe sizing is a tension point when shopping for shoes online.where to buy nike floral shoes Then we searched in Quid for specific terms. nike canvas shoes collectionWords like “fit,” “comfort” and “price” clearly resonate within the reviews, while terms like “quality,” “style” and “durable” garner far less interest among consumers.wedding shoes outlet uk

Over time, the number of reviews for both pairs of shoes have decreased, with the majority of reviews being written from October 2015 to March 2016, indicating general purchasing trends over the last year.best running shoe stores chicago From a shoe company’s point of view, all the elements built into a shoe’s quality -- its construction, materials, design, etc. -- may take months or years to adjust. best recommended tennis shoesBut using Quid, analyzing large datasets to see which factors are important to consumers takes just a few minutes. And with record-breaking online sales this year, companies will benefit from not only understanding the online customer's concerns but also modifying their approach accordingly. Sneakers, Nike, Adidas, Basketball Unfortunately, we are unable to process your request at this time.

Adam Jones: 'Nothing is at rest when it comes to race' Under Armour's Stephen Curry basketball shoes rank fourth, survey shows Lorraine Mirabella span Contact Reporter There's no denying the power of Nike's Swoosh logo, and when it comes to the online market, the brand's athletic shoes dominate as well, a report out this week shows. But Under Armour's Stephen Curry basketball shoes are rising in the ranks, according to digital commerce firm Slice Intelligence. The Curry brand is now the fourth most popular NBA player shoe, Slice says. "Under Armour's first major NBA endorsed player shoe line is still below Nike's lineup, but, like Steph himself, is getting increasingly popular," the report said. "The shoe has been 170 percent more popular during the past six months compared to the previous half-year period." The analysis found that 64 percent of online athletic footwear shoppers buy Nike shoes. Nike's website has cornered about a third of the online market, beating out both Amazon and Zappos.

Slice lists the top four NBA player shoes as Nike Air Jordan, with 72 percent of sales, Nike Kobe, with a nearly 14 percent share, Nike LeBron, with about 10 percent, and Under Armour Curry One and Curry Two, with more than 4 percent of sales. Curry's have been selling best in the player's Golden State Warriors home state, with San Francisco the top market followed by New York, Los Angeles, Baltimore, where Under Armour is based, and Chicago. The New York City metro market is the top region for online sales for Jordan and LeBron shoes, even though the athletes never played for New York teams. Slice says it measures digital commerce using e-receipts from a panel of more than four million online shoppers. © 2017, The Baltimore Sun, a Baltimore Sun Media Group publication | NEW AUTHENTIC ADIDAS Dame 3 Legacy Basketball Shoes - White; BW0323 See more like this on November 26, 2016 at 6:00 AM, updated It was barely a year ago that Mark Parker, Nike's chief executive, made a public pledge as big and bold as his company.

The Beaverton-area juggernaut's sales would explode, he predicted, pushing annual revenue from $30 billion to $50 billion by 2020. Having built a seemingly impregnable position atop the athletic footwear and apparel industry, few questioned that Nike could make it happen. Today, however, $50 billion seems a long way off. Nike's archrival Adidas has become the story of 2016. Hitting a sweet spot at the crossroads of sports and pop culture, Adidas is posting sustained double-digit sales gains, particularly in the key North American market where it was dead in the water just two years ago. Nike is still growing. Its dominant position atop the athletic footwear and apparel business remains secure. But Adidas and upstart Under Armour are growing faster. For the first time in recent memory, they're grabbing market share from The Swoosh. "Nike has had a terrific run, much of it at the expense of Adidas," said Jim Duffy, an analyst with the financial services firm Stifel Financial Corp. "But Adidas has its act together again.

They're gaining share, and they're going to gain more." Possibly more troubling for Nike is the sentiment that its pipeline of hot new products has run dry. "I don't see a whole lot of mis-execution at Nike," said analyst Andrew Burns of D.A. Davidson. "What I hear from the critics is a lack of innovation, newness. Flyknit, (a groundbreaking footwear technology) has been around for four years. But you can't take credit for that forever." Camilo Lyon, an analyst with Canaccord Genuity, echoed those sentiments, calling Nike's new products "weak and uninspiring." Whether Nike's issues represent a temporary hiccup or a more dire matter, they pose one of the toughest management challenges for Parker since he ascended to the CEO's office a decade ago. Wall Street has noticed. Propelled by downgrades by Lyon and a handful of other analysts, Nike's stock has declined roughly 17.5 percent since the beginning of the year. That's more than $19 billion in lost market value. Nike insists it's stronger than ever.

The company declined requests for interviews, but in a written statement said it will "continue to deliver growth" across its portfolio. "We have the deepest roster of athletes, a strong leadership bench and we're innovating across performance and sportswear, manufacturing, digital services and at retail where we serve the consumer every day," the company said. "We are a growth company": In a business that prides itself on innovation, 2016 has been a strange year for the athletic footwear and apparel business. Shoes designed decades ago are selling in huge volumes. According to market researchers NPD Group, the three top-selling sneakers in the U.S. in October were updated versions of classic shoes introduced decades ago -- the Adidas Superstar, the Converse All-Star Ox Low and the Nike Huarache. NPD analyst Matt Powell said the top sellers are a reflection of a dramatic consumer shift from performance athletic gear toward more casual sportswear. "We're in an extraordinary time for the industry, not a single performance category is trending positively," he said.

"I have never seen this happen in 16 years." Adidas has been a big beneficiary of the shift. The German company with North American headquarters in Portland has introduced a constant stream of updated Superstars, Stan Smiths, Gazelles and Sambas, and the public can't get enough. Adidas sold 15 million pair of Superstars alone in 2015, making it the best-selling sneaker of the year "by far," according to former CEO Herbert Hainer. Adidas' Originals sales jumped nearly 50 percent in the company's third quarter, compared with the same three months last year. That's on top of a 47 percent increase in the third quarter of 2015. Adidas also has jumped unapologetically into fashion and celebrity, partnering with musicians and designers. The Yeezy line developed with rapper Kanye West has proved a big success. There was a time when purists would sneer at a sports company cutting deals with rappers and reality television stars, arguing that in the end it would damage the brand.

But those days are gone. Nike notes that it, too, has relationships with non-athletes like comedian Kevin Hart and apparel designer Jun Takahashi. The consumer shift away from sports is reflected in Nike's revenue. The company's basketball sales declined 1 percent in fiscal 2016, though that decline was more than offset by the continued strength of its Jordan brand. Soccer fell 5 percent, golf 8 percent and action sports 4 percent. The generic category of sportswear, meanwhile, jumped 14 percent, to $7.5 billion. The established marketing model of aligning a shoe with a superstar athlete took its lumps inside Nike. Analysts said the lackluster response to some recent editions of the LeBron James and Kevin Durant shoes came because consumers didn't like their looks nor the hefty price tags. Tom Nikic, an analyst with Wells Fargo Securities, said the latest Durant shoe, the KD 9, got off to a stronger start in part because Nike lowered the price by nearly 30 percent.

Nike shook up its basketball management in June when Michael D. Jackson, global basketball general manager, left the company. Jackson was among a steady trickle of senior-level executives to exit Nike or be reassigned since April. Consumers' new emphasis on fashion doesn't mean that the traditional athlete endorsement no longer works. Just ask Under Armour. Still largely an apparel company, Under Armour instantly established itself as a player in the basketball footwear market when it introduced its signature Stephen Curry basketball shoe. Kevin Plank, Under Armour's brash chief executive, told analysts in a recent conference call that the Curry line has propelled the company's footwear sales from $239 million in 2012 to nearly $1 billion this year. LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers won the NBA title. But on the sneaker front, Golden State's Curry proved a huge winner for Under Armour. Of course, relying on a single product is a dangerous thing. Under Armour's stock sank nearly 5 percent last week after a Foot Locker executive mentioned the just-released Curry 3 shoe seemed to be off to a slow start.

Still, the Baltimore company, which is building out a new Portland office, has posted 26 consecutive quarters of 20 percent or higher sales growth. Its rapid rise has altered the competitive dynamic in the industry. "They're at $5 billion a year in revenue and adding $1 billion a year," Nikic said. "It is big enough now to move the needle in the industry. I do believe they are stepping on Nike's toes a bit." Under Armour wants to do more than step on toes. Its goal is to supplant Nike as the leader of the industry. "We've never felt that there was one company at the top of the industry that was unassailable, said Kevin Haley, president of category management and innovation at Under Armour. "Life is too short to strive to be no. 2." Nike insiders may scoff: Their company is six times the size of Under Armour and, until recently, twice the size of Adidas. Nevertheless, it will be a fascinating horserace to watch. And while the big three have distanced themselves, new or resurgent brands like Oiselle, Puma and New Balance can't be counted out.

"The competition has really upped its game," Lyon said. "When Nike was really crushing it, Adidas and Under Armour were not the companies they are now." Foot Locker CEO Richard Johnson is part shoe salesman, part diplomat. He parses his words carefully to avoid offending any of the notoriously competitive sneaker brands he counts as suppliers. But in a Nov. 18 conference call to stock analysts, Johnson was unequivocal: "The continued strength of Adidas," he said, is "one of the most significant dynamics in the industry. They're on a great run." Then Johnson quickly added that Nike remains Foot Locker's biggest brand. Foot Locker reported strong sales growth and earnings in November, a rare bit of happy news in an otherwise troubled retail scene. The rise of e-commerce has been deadly to brick-and-mortar retail chains. The Sports Authority, Sport Chalet and several other national sporting goods chains collapsed into bankruptcy in recent months. The vanquished retailers took some $4 billion in sales out of the system, Under Armour's Plank complained in a recent conference call.